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It was a fine dining restaurant, but corporate run as a museum contracted out their food services.

The worst part is that you're charged regardless of whether you eat staff meal. As with any fine dining restaurant, a lot of times you're too busy to eat because of the amount of work on your hands. There was also a day each week where there's a skeleton crew, and no staff meal is made that day. Still got charged though.

last place I worked at deducted a buck something off your pay each day for staff meal. Quite stingey of them imo.

We charge the FOH staff for family meal, BOH eats free. Our family meal can be pretty good though depending on whose cooking and whats left around from parties the night before, so I don't think anyone has a problem paying.

We have staff meals everyday, we usually use up what we have extra of. On busy nights like saturdays/ holidays we usually order a turkey, bottom round, or something like that to feed everyone. Its free, the only thing is we don't get discounts of the menu unless we come in for dinner. If were working we have to pay full price for any dish. However we have some vegetarians so we will make them pasta, or salads if they can't have the staff for that day.

The only place i have worked that has had that but i feel its a great idea.

Family meal is usually pretty good at my locations, served once a day and at no charge. If a cook serves up mediocre food they'll get hell, especially from me. There should always be something for everyone, even for the vegetarians and non-pork eaters. Sometimes we order things that may not be offered at that particular spot, e.g., hot dogs, burgers, tortillas, pasta, rice, etc... One of my favorite tests for someone trying out in the kitchen is to spring family on them and see how they work under pressure of their potential colleagues, and see their creativity and frugality in using cost conscious ingredients.

I have worked in places where the staff orders what they want, whenever they want. NO BUENO! It isn't efficient and could lead to favoritism and theft, plus it's nice to have everyone sit at the same time and take a break. Though we also tell our kitchen staff to...

TASTE, TASTE, and TASTE!!!
If you are hungry when family meal is served, you haven’t tasted your mis en place enough times.

I graze the kitchen all day long so I'm usually all set, but then again I'm fat.

When we are on the topic of staff meals, here's a quote from Thomas Keller himself:

"Staff meal was first about the fundamentals of cooking and how to work with by-products, using scraps to make something tasty, eye appealing and satisfying. But the message underlying that was 'Can you be passionate about cooking at this level?' Staff meal. Only the staff sees it. If you can make great food for these people, create that habit, have that drive, that sincerity, and keep that with you and take it to another level in the staff meal, then someday you'll be a great chef. Maybe."

For me different sections of the kitchen have to cook staff meal every week. It's always the same, burgers, pasta, curries. But it changes once in a while.
Where I work previously you were able to order and cook what you want for staff, as long as it's not wagyu or lobsters you are cooking.
Which was great because the staff didn't like eating the same thing every week; so we got to experiment and try new things.

Last week we prepared a holiday staff meal for FOH, what did we get? Squat, nada, zilch, zero...haven't seen a staff meal in over a year thanks to the two places I've worked in that time. Not quite sure how I feel about it either...